Superconductivity is a remarkable phenomenon: superconductors can transport electric current without any resistance and thus without any losses whatsoever. It is already in use in some niche areas, for example ...

(Phys.org)—Scientists have found the first direct evidence that a mysterious phase of matter known as the "pseudogap" competes with high-temperature superconductivity, robbing it of electrons that otherwise ...

(Phys.org) —Scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have shown for the first time how high-temperature superconductivity emerges out of magnetism in an iron pnictide, ...

(Phys.org) —For more than a quarter of a century, high-temperature superconductors – materials that can transmit electric current without any resistance – have perplexed scientists who seek to understand ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists are divided on whether string theory is a viable theory of everything, but many agree that it offers a new way to look at physical phenomena that have otherwise proven difficult ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using lasers to contain some ultra-chilled atoms, a team of scientists has measured the viscosity or stickiness of a gas often considered to be the sixth state of matter. The measurements ...

A world record that has stood for more than a decade has been broken by a team led by University of Cambridge engineers, harnessing the equivalent of three tonnes of force inside a golf ball-sized sample ...

An international team of researchers from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University and the Paul Scherrer Institute (Villigen, Switzerland) has observed a new, unexpected kind of behaviour ...

(Phys.org) —Scientists from SLAC and Stanford have used finely tuned X-rays at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) to pin down the source of a mysterious magnetism that appears when two ...

An international team led by University of Toronto physicists has developed a simple new technique using Scotch poster tape that has enabled them to induce high-temperature superconductivity in a semiconductor ...

U.S., German and Austrian physicists studying the perplexing class of materials that includes high-temperature superconductors are reporting this week the unexpected discovery of a simple "scaling" behavior in the electronic ...

A German-French research team has constructed a new model that explains how the so-called pseudogap state forms in high-temperature superconductors. The calculations predict two coexisting electron orders. ...

High-temperature superconductivity

High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-Tc or HTS) are materials that have a superconducting transition temperature (Tc) above 30 K, which was thought (1960-1980) to be the highest theoretically allowed Tc. The first high-Tc superconductor was discovered in 1986 by Karl Müller and Johannes Bednorz, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987. The term high-temperature superconductor was used interchangeably with cuprate superconductor until Fe-based superconductors were discovered in 2008. The best known high-temperature superconductors are bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, BSCCO and yttrium barium copper oxide, YBCO.

High-temperature has three common definitions in the context of superconductivity:

Technological applications benefit from both the higher critical temperature being above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen and also the higher critical magnetic field (and critical current density) at which superconductivity is destroyed. In magnet applications the high critical magnetic field may be more valuable than the high Tc itself. Some cuprates have an upper critical field around 100 tesla. However, cuprate materials are brittle ceramics which are expensive to manufacture and not easily turned into wires or other useful shapes.

Two decades of intense experimental and theoretical research, with over 100,000 published papers on the subject, has discovered many common features in the properties of high-temperature superconductors, but as of 2009[update] there is no widely accepted theory to explain their properties. Cuprate superconductors (and other unconventional superconductors) differ in many important ways from conventional superconductors, such as elemental mercury or lead, which are adequately explained by the BCS theory. There also has been much debate as to high-temperature superconductivity coexisting with magnetic ordering in YBCO, iron-based superconductors, several ruthenocuprates and other exotic superconductors, and the search continues for other families of materials. HTS are Type-II superconductors which allow magnetic fields to penetrate their interior in quantized units of flux, meaning that much higher magnetic fields are required to suppress superconductivity. Their layered structure also affects their response to magnetic fields.